Eveline's Strangest Journey Ch. 01

Chapter 1 - Daybreak

Eveline Rogers' alarm clock went off a third time. It seemed she had just hit that fucking snooze button, and here it was, already tormenting her, yet again. No, there was no getting out of it: the day most definitely had started.

The student forced herself to sit up. The early morning sunlight was pouring through her window. She had left her curtains open on purpose the night before, precisely so the light would add to the noise of the alarm clock and force her to get up. As much as she wanted to go back to sleep, it was too late. The light was blinding and the alarm was still going.

Yes - yes, time to get moving. The teenager forced herself to stand up as her eyes adjusted to the bright room. She groaned from a horrible headache, an upset stomach, and the fact she had only had three hours of sleep.

She looked about the room, which was in about the same condition as her head. Dirty clothes were tossed around, the sheets were pulled off her bed, and several days' worth of dirty dishes were piled on her dresser. The stench of rotting food from the plates and filling her garbage can was getting pretty bad. She'd have to take all that shit to the kitchen and dump it in the sink. Then she thought: screw it. I'll take care of it in the afternoon.

In the corner nearest the window there was a small table that was somewhat cleared off, covered with a couple of schoolbooks and an assignment she had half-heartedly tried to start the night before. She had not gotten very far into it, which was nothing new. It looked like it would be yet another missed assignment and yet another "F".

Eveline wondered if there was even any point in bothering to go to school. The fall semester had just started and it seemed that she was already failing everything. She had been held back the previous year and because of that was still in the eleventh grade. The whole thing was getting to be an embarrassment, especially since it looked like she'd be flunking this year too. Maybe it was finally time to just give up and quit.

Alright, so, if she didn't go to class, where could she go? She sure as hell didn't want to stay in the house. There was nothing to do around town except wander the streets, since she didn't have any money. So, she would indeed end up going to school, simply because there was nowhere else to go and nothing better to do with the day.

Eveline badly had to piss. Hopefully the hallway bathroom would be open. She opened up her bedroom door and stepped over a passed-out fat dude wearing greasy jeans and a torn black shirt. The shirt was pulled up to his chest, leaving his hairy tattooed stomach on display. Gross.

She looked in the bathroom. Someone had vomited purple slime all over the mirror and the sink. And, of course, there was a man sitting, fully dressed, in the shower. Go figure. Another of her brother's creepy tweaker friends, puffing on a meth pipe. She knew better than to try to tell him to move, because he had an ominous look in his eyes that indicated he was more likely to punch her than do what she asked.

The house had another bathroom in the master bedroom, but Eveline had not seen it for months. Her brother Lucas had converted the main bathroom into a meth lab and kept the door locked whenever he wasn't in there. Not that Eveline would have dared go in anyway. All those chemicals and equipment scared her. She knew that stuff was dangerous.

Fuck. That meant she'd have to go in the yard and piss outside. She went back to her room, grabbed a roll of toilet paper, and went out the back door. She glanced over at the neighbor's house to make sure no one was looking out the window, then went between a partially disassembled pickup truck and the fence. She lifted her oversized t-shirt and squatted. She glanced at a dilapidated dog house that was near the back porch. Seeing it reminded her of the dog her family used to have, back when they were leading more normal lives. It also reminded her of her own squalid situation.

Am I really doing this? Am I really in the back yard, shitting outside like a fucking dog? She finished, wiped herself, and left the shitty paper on the ground. Fuck 'em. Everyone else is coming out here to piss. All the fucking drunks, pissing out their beer. Like my shit's gonna make any difference, one way or the other.

Eveline returned to her room to see if she could find any clean clothes. She found only a pair of shorts and one of her mother's blouses. It was a total mis-match and would look ridiculous. She decided to wear her school basketball uniform. Maybe it'd look a bit out of place in class, but at least the outfit was clean.

She stuffed her untouched homework and school books into her backpack, along with her ID's and library card. She didn't bother trying to straighten anything in her room. The room was only slightly less trashed than the rest of the house, but she didn't care.

She went to the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat. She walked through the living room, where Lucas and his girlfriend were sleeping on a mattress on the floor. A couple of other tweakers were there as well, one asleep in a reclining chair and the other in a sleeping bag on the floor.

To Eveline's surprise, there actually was food in the kitchen, and not just the usual tweaker regimen of candy and packaged snack cakes. There were sacks of sandwich supplies, along with chips, cans of nuts, and several jugs of cheap fruit punch left on the counter. Several economy-size packages of raw hamburger were sitting out, along with a big bottle of ketchup and sacks of hamburger buns. Not to mention cases of beer and whiskey stacked on the floor.

Shit, that means there's gonna be yet another party at the house tonight, and a big one, judging by the amount of food and booze in the kitchen. Yes, for once there was plenty of stuff from which Eveline could make breakfast, but later on, when she got home, she faced a miserable loud night in a house full of drunks and drugged creeps.

She looked with disdain at the stack of raw hamburger on the counter. The color of the meat was starting to change and blood was seeping out of the packages and dripping onto the counter-top. She wondered if the meat would go bad before her brother's girlfriend had a chance to cook it. She certainly hoped so. It would be so awesome if that whole gang would get food poisoning.

Before she left the house, Eveline decided to check if anyone had left any money lying around. She quietly moved about the living room and noticed a jacket hanging on a chair. She had no idea whose jacket it was, nor did she care. She slipped her hands in the pockets and, sure enough, there was a wallet... with cash! Awesome! There was more than $ 200, but she knew better than to take all of it. She pocketed two $ 20 bills and put the rest back. Now she was set for the next couple of days as far as lunch money was concerned.

The next couple of days. That was about as far ahead as Eveline could think. She lived day to day in that chaotic house, grabbing whatever was available to eat, using the bathroom whenever she could, and using the yard whenever she couldn't. She was always on the lookout for a chance to grab some cash, but not too much at a time. Occasionally she'd have enough silence in the house to do some homework or a class assignment, but it was not nearly enough.

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Eveline decided to walk to school. It was only a 20-minute walk and, because of its meandering route, taking the school bus wasn't much faster. Anyhow, she did not want to deal with her classmates at the moment. She was disgusted and angry at her situation, at life in general, and Lucas in particular. He always had a wild streak in him, but things went really bad after their mother was convicted of investment fraud and sent to jail. As soon as Mom was out of the picture, Lucas led a life of hard partying, now that he had an entire house to himself. He had no job, of course, but with control over the family property, he could have a meth lab. The meth operation gave Lucas what he needed to party with his friends; a steady supply of drugs and a supply of cash from selling.

Mom was not in a position to do anything about Lucas. She had been sentenced to 10 years for a bunch of scams she was running, and even that decade-long sentence was the result of a good lawyer and a plea-bargain. It was obvious Mom had been involved in some pretty serious shit. The prosecution went as far as considering her indirectly responsible for two suicides and a murder. The jury didn't have much sympathy and the judge stated that she was damn lucky to get just 10 years.

If Eveline didn't think things could get any worse after her mother went to jail and her brother set up the meth lab, she was wrong. Over the summer Lucas' girlfriend Alicia moved in with him. She was a couple of years older than Lucas, a nasty tattooed punk-rocker with a violent temper and a mean personality. The crowd she hung out with was different from Lucas' cohorts, but they seemed to complement each other in their drug-induced depravity. The fact that Eveline was still living at home didn't matter to either of them. If Eveline didn't like it, tough shit, she could leave.

And, with Alicia and her crowd showing up along with Lucas' biker friends, the house became a notorious party-house, meth-house, and flop-house for tweakers. The neighbors complained and the police were constantly passing by, but they never did anything. Had Eveline been under 18, the police could have nailed Lucas for putting a minor in danger, but her birthday had passed over the summer and she was legally an adult. Alicia was well-aware of that, and had started working on Lucas to kick his sister out of the house so they could take over her room. Eveline was starting to worry about becoming homeless. As it was, she was close to being homeless already.